I am in the process of moving myself, my love, and two VERY confused dogs from one side of the country to the other. O, adventure! O, excitement! O, incredibly large stack of messages in my inbox that grows ever-larger by the day, mocking me with cold, numeric cruelty!

Anyway, yes. It will probably be going on September before I'm properly settled, so until then, please forgive me if I am very late and terrible with answering comments and notes.

: my firepig is named DICKBAG: hahaha: why: it was the first thing that came to mind: you are a horrible person: i have decided that i will name all my pokemon with the first thing that pops in my head: i have learned a lot about myself this way

My little dog has been sick for over a week. On Christmas day, we found out why: a fourteen-inch obstruction of tangled hair(!!!!) in her GI tract. One long drive later, we found ourselves back in NYC, sitting in the lobby of the emergency vet and waiting while they examined the dog.

Long story short, they were able to remove the blockage--without surgery, even--and we returned home. So, ok, we had to cut Christmas short, spent most of the day in a panic, and left all of our presents at Bailiwick's grandma's house, but hey! The dog lived, and we weren't bankrupt. Plus, we were going be driving out of town on Monday to see my family.

And then, well. Blizzard. 20 inches of snow in Central Park. Blah blah, roads a mess, horrible winds, nobody's going anywhere. The wind is still rattling our building, but it should subside by tomorrow. So maybe . . . maybe we'll get out? Maybe we'll even get to the highway without ending up in a ditch, or a drift, or being eaten by the abominable snowman.

I realize that my problems are very minor in the grand scheme of things. But this Christmas, man. Damn.

I can't begin to say how amazed and impressed I am at the quality (and quantity!) of the Monster Parade entries. Every single one of you totally outdid yourselves. Now, at long last, here are your winners! In no particular order, they are:

by

by

by

All three winners submitted multiple amazing entries. Congratulations, you guys. You earned it! Don't forget to comment or note me to let me know what you'd like for your sketches!!

Congratulations to painted-bees and Lady-Liara, who BOTH managed to catch my 1,000,000th pageview! They will each be receiving a two-character picture of their choice, to be completed sometime before the next ice age. Meanwhile, I will try to figure out how two different people managed to become the exact same visitor. My theories so far include:

1. They are actually the same person2. They are actually different people, but are posting from parallel universes3. NONE OF THIS IS REAL OH GOD WHERE AM I

I SUPPOSE it could just be a quirk of the site, owing to the fact that this kind of thing happens all the time, but I think we can all agree that Occam's razor points us to option number two.

Monster Parade is almost done and should be up tomorrow, along with the winners!

My computer is scheduled to be back from the shop in a few days, which means I will FINALLY get to put the big bad monster parade together. (I tried it on the old compy, and it was eleven different kinds of Not Happening.) It will be so nice to be back on a fast machine . . . !

In the meantime, I want to say thank you for the DD! I came back from a very busy weekend to find my inbox stuffed full of wonderful messages. Thank you all for your fantastic comments, and hello to my new watchers!

Hey everybody! I have finally cataloged the last of the monsters! There are so many amazing entries, and I want to make sure I get them all in. IF YOU SUBMITTED A MONSTER, PLEASE GO HERE AND MAKE SURE IT IS THERE! Every monster submitted through DA should be in that folder. (I know a few of you sent me photobucket links or DA Muro drawings, which unfortunately can't be favorited.)

If you don't see your monster, PLEASE NOTE OR COMMENT so that I am sure to include him! I am going to start putting this beast together this week, and I don't want to leave anybody out!!

My poor computer's hard drive went kaboom, so that is why I have not been able to answer notes/comments/various Monster-Parade-Related things. Luckily, I didn't lose any data, but things will be slow over here while the compy's in the shop. I'm currently on a very old, yet somehow very stable machine. THEY DON'T BUILD 'EM LIKE THEY USED TO </old person>

Hey everybody! I am totally amazed and impressed at all of the fabulous monsters I've received for the monster parade!!!! As you have probably guessed from the title, I haven't had the chance to check messages for a few days, so I am running a wee bit behind in getting all of the monsters accounted for. Never fear--I will remedy that asap. In the meantime, KEEP SENDIN' YO' MONSTARZ.

Deadline: November 5 (it would be Halloween, but I was a wee bit late getting this up. Whoopsie-daisies!)

How to join:

Simply draw a monster lurching, shuffling, dancing, or prancing along like the little guy pictured here! Send me a link to your file, and I will put all of the monsters together in a fantastic, monsteriffic parade!

Please submit your files as pngs or transparent gifs, to make them easier to composite! Any style and type of monster is acceptable, although I'd like to keep it so this doesn't need a mature filter--so no noodz plz.

Also specify whether your monster is small, medium, or large sized, so I know how big to make him in the lineup!

Prizes:

As an extra incentive (I hope!), my three favorite monsters will win a sketch of your choice from me!

MONSTER PARADE: JOIN OR BE EATEN BY MONSTERS.

***AND WHILE YOU ARE HERE, check out these other contests and events!***

Zillions of years ago, I was a big fan of the Marvel comic X-Force. The book featured a bunch of characters who had been in New Mutants, plus a slew of new(er) mutants including my favorite character, Shatterstar.

Shatterstar was one of those characters who started out terrible but ended up really neat. In his original incarnation, he was a weird, pouch-covered Liefeldian gladiator from the Mojoverse. But the character grew, and became an interesting study in contrasts. He was a badass warrior who didn't understand anything about human life or culture, and learned most of it from watching television. Oh, and from hanging out with his best friend and fellow teammate, Rictor (real name: Julio Richter, which is kind of hilarious). Shatterstar even learned Spanish (from telenovelas) so that he could converse with Rictor in private. For years, the two of them had an Ambiguously Gay Duo vibe about them. Definitely enough there if you wanted to ship them, but nothing canon. Mostly, I just enjoyed reading their exploits, loved their friendship, and wanted them to be Bestest Pals and live Happily Ever After, either as a couple or as heterosexual life partners in the vein of Jay and Silent Bob (or Holmes and Watson, if you want a more literary reference).

Unfortunately, as always happens, the comic started going off the rails in terms of story, and it wasn't long after the whole Shatterstar/Ben Russell body-switching mess that I abandoned reading it altogether. The book got canceled, and the characters were scattered to the winds, popping up here and there in various X titles. Occasionally, I'd have a fit of nostalgia and check the Wikipedia page for Shatterstar or Rictor to see what they were up to. Not much, and not much of it worth reading.

So I suppose it makes sense that I missed Shatterstar and Rictor's BIG KISS last year.

It was a real kiss, too. Not a dream sequence, not a what-if, not a somebody-was-mind-controlled-and-takes-it-back (Shatterstar had, in fact, just snapped out of mind control, which does generally put one in the mood for smooches). Good on you, Peter David, for writing it, and good on Marvel for publishing it. So many times, LGBT characters get a wink-wink-nod treatment, oblique references, or just end up as token hooray-for-diversity statements or embarrassing caricatures. It's really cool to see two fully-realized characters get together.

Plus, I've been reading their exploits since I was in middle school. I feel like I know them so well, I should send them a present. Or post a long, rambling DA journal about them. You know, if I were inclined to do such a thing.

Hey guys! You may remember this piece I did for jisuk's Broken Spell card deck. Well, the deck is on sale now! Go HERE to order you up a copy. Some amazing artists (much better than yours truly) participated in this deck, and it's really going to be a thing of beauty! You have until September 10 to snag your copy. Go go go go!

From the website:

Broken Spell is the result of a collective 56 artists coming together to create a playing card deck based on their favorite fairy tales. Each card is illustrated by a different artist in their unique style.

The deck consists of 54 casino quality, plastic coated playing cards, printed on 300gsm paperboard stick -- the finest playing card stock available. Each deck comes in a specially designed box and there will be only one, limited printing of the deck, meaning after ordering is closed, there will be no more available. The end date for orders has been bumped from Aug 31 to Sept 10th due to delays.